The Politics of Adoption

Gender and the Making of French Citizenship

Bruno Perreau

Publication Year: 2014

In May 2013, after months of controversy, France legalized same-sex marriage and adoption by homosexual couples. Obstacles to adoption and parenting equality remain, however -- many of them in the form of cultural and political norms reflected and expressed in French adoption policies. In <I>The Politics of Adoption</I>, Bruno Perreau describes the evolution of these policies. In the past thirty years, Perreau explains, political and intellectual life in France have been dominated by debates over how to preserve "Frenchness," and these debates have driven policy making. Adoption policies, he argues, link adoption to citizenship, reflecting and enforcing the postcolonial state's notions of parenthood, gender, and Frenchness. After reviewing the complex history of adoption, Perreau examines French political debates over adoption, noting, among other things, that intercountry adoptions stirred far less controversy than the difference between the sexes in an adopting couple. He also discusses judicial action on adoption; child welfare agencies as gatekeepers to parenthood (as defined by experts); the approval process from the viewpoints of social workers and applicants; and adoption's link to citizenship, and its use as a metaphor for belonging. Adopting a Foucaultian perspective, Perreau calls the biopolitics of adoption "pastoral": it manages the individual for the good of the collective "flock"; it considers itself outside politics; and it considers not so much the real behavior of individuals as an allegorical representation of them. His argument sheds new light on American debates on bioethics, identity, and citizenship.

Cover

Series Info, Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

Series Foreword

I am pleased to present the forty-second book in the Basic Bioethics series.
The series makes innovative works in bioethics available to a broad
audience and introduces seminal scholarly manuscripts, state-of-the-art
reference works, and textbooks. ...

Acknowledgements

The Politics of Adoption was born in 2010 when I joined MIT as an assistant
professor of French Studies. After ten years of teaching and writing
in Paris, I was eager to open new directions in my study of kinship
and belonging. This book can be read as a first contribution to a broader
project that questions the very notion of “culture.” ...

Introduction

On May 17, 2013, after several months of fierce debate in the media, in
the streets, and in the legislature, France legalized same-sex marriage and
entitled homosexual couples to adopt children jointly. A major watershed
had apparently occurred: henceforth, French family law would ostensibly
treat all citizens alike, with no distinction based on sex, gender, or
sexuality. ...

1 The Multiple Meanings of Adoption

Adoption covers situations that have varied greatly from one culture and
period to another. They range from the transfer of political power (during
the Roman Empire) to the sharing of economic resources among neighbors
(notarial adoption in the Middle Ages), to the passing on of personal
property (the Napoleonic Code Civil of 1804), ...

2 The Legislative Arena

The history of adoption policies in France is surprisingly consistent in
terms of the issues debated over the past sixty years or so. Despite profound
changes in the institution of adoption, the questions that frequently
resurface concern the imbalance of supply and demand,2 the status of single
women,3 and the relationship between children ’ s rights and the right
to children.4 ...

3 The Jurisprudential Forum

Adoption brings into play a set of disparate institutions from child welfare
agencies to the social services administration via regional governments,
local courts, and administrative tribunals, all driven by very different—indeed, opposing—interests and modes of socialization and symbolic reward. ...

4 Administering Parenthood

The field of adoption includes players from varying backgrounds and
careers: local and national administrative personnel, independent psychologists
and psychiatrists, volunteers in humanitarian organizations,
activists for parental causes, journalists, and so on. ...

5 What Approval Means

During the nineteenth century, Western societies sought to enhance surveillance
of fringe groups by anticipating the danger represented by the
latter.2 They drew support from a new notion based on probability and
abstraction, namely, risk.3 ...

6 Children of the Nation

On a talk show called Mots Croisés (Crossword), broadcast on French
television in May 2007, essayist Alain Finkielkraut—discussing the subject
of national identity—claimed that France was not a “smorgasbord.”
Referring to the obligations that went with “integration,” he stressed that
people had to earn French nationality. ...

Conclusion

The Politics of Adoption is an invitation to question what makes a community,
to shift the issue of biology from a perspective centered on the
significance of vital ties to a critical analysis of technologies of power
through which we conceive ourselves as living beings. 2 ...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.